King of Quake jets his way down San Antonio Raceway

Bob Motz, the King of Quake, continues to thrill drag racing fans across the country with his rocket-powered rides down the dragstrips in his jet semi truck.

The past two nights at San Antonio Raceway, Motz has given the fans a thrilling show at the IHRA Amalie Oil Texas Nationals when he blasted down the track after the Night of Fire pro qualifying rounds.

(courtesy of eMax Drag Racing Series)

Motz’s truck is one of the most unique spectacles in drag racing today.

His truck is a 1998 W 900 Kenworth, with a conventional sleeper. It’s powered by a J79 General Electric jet engine, which are used on the B-58 Bomber or F4 Phanton Fighter jet.

When Motz fires up his engine, the sky lights up, the ground starts to shake and it sounds like a jet plane is about to take off.

When Motz lifts off the starting line, his engine is putting out 17,500 lbs of thrust. As his truck blasts down the quarter-mile track, an afterburner glows and burns out of the back end of the truck. The truck consumes between 80-90 gallons of jet fuel per each quarter-mile run.

When Motz reaches the top end of the track, four parachutes with 16-foot ribbons helps to bring him to a stop.

His best elapsed time is a 6.99 and his best speed is 234.60 mph. He currently holds both the IHRA and NHRA record for speed and elapsed time

Only once in Motz’s career has he raced another jet semi truck in a side-by-side race. At the Sunoco World Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio in 2002, Motz and Les Shockley raced each other. That run was limited to 1/8 of a mile over concerns that the truck’s parachutes might entangle with one another.

Motz won 5.07 seconds to Shockley’s 5.30 seconds.

On Friday night Motz made a pass at 7.768, 201.29 mph. On Saturday he posted a 6.768-second, 208.71 mph run.